I’ve always been an Elvis fan. What man could both rattle and roll the spirit of a small dog? From Love Me Tender to Hound-dog, let’s face it, the man understood the canine spirit.

But Dog can’t listen to the same thing every day. Dog is as diverse as the small game he chases. Mixing it up keeps things fresh, after all. I happen to like most all music—opera being the stand-alone exception. Puccini=Piu (a shortened term for puteo, which is Latin, of course, for “to stink, be redolent, or smell bad…in case you were wondering).

One wonders what tune Elvis would be singing now if he were still among the living. Rocking out, or a more comely croon? Age has it’s parameters.

Then there are the Rolling Stones. A half-century after they first took the stage, they still rock the house. As a dog, I haven’t personally seen them except on that flat table against the wall called television. Sure, they look a little different than they did a few years ago, but who doesn’t? Even MY ears droop under a decade of pursuing chicks in the hen yard. The paws don’t work the same way; my nose, at times, is mute to certain scents; and my ears? Well, let’s just say, the radio volume is turned up a notch or two these days.

Maybe that’s why Mick, Keith, Ronnie and Charlie are the ones I now prefer. With the volume up, and my eyes closed, they still have it after all those years. And in that, there’s hope for me at this ripe age (seventy in dog years), and anyone else of that generation.

There coming tour is not a retrospective, but an introspective: Not looking back; looking around and rejoicing in where we ARE.

Elvis may be in my heart, but these days the Stones are on my iPawed. Chow.

Pious, as she sits on a kitchen table from which I am banned, she licks the top of a bowl of fresh polenta and cream. Abandoned briefly by it’s human consumer, Fraud feigns concern for the man. In the all-important drawl of a long meeoow she explains, “Official food-taster.”

I purse my flews, raising a corner to bare one tooth.

For one, Dog would never simply lick an edible. Polenta, especially, is to be gobbled before it’s owner resumes position at the table, without a thought to it’s quality. Something by which there is seldom a mistake, and if there is, it only affords the opportunity to eat twice…

Two, licking an object is an insipid behavior unless cleaning oneself, the young, or initiating reciprocation in some fashion: a pat on the head; a scratch behind the ears, a treat.

Licking is for sissies. Or a feline who merely wishes to make a point: All things of table domain are mine, even if I dont want them.

So, I ask you: Why cat?

Unteachable, undisciplined, aloof. She has the run of the house because she ignores civilization. If she were a dog, she’d be banished. Yet, well-trained, restrained and sociable, it is Dog who is relegated to the floor. Manners: the self-inflicted restriction keeping Dog’s paws on the ground.

Man saunters in, seats himself, and digs into the polenta. Fraud sits like a centerpiece in the middle of the table, licks her paws and swipes her face, tongue sweeping in grains of polenta hanging like ticks on a whisker.

For all those skeptical that a small dog might climb the vines and vineyard wires, let alone anything else, I offer Sofia.

She may not be of the ‘”terrorista” breed, but she knows (as does any dog) the best way to get ahead in the world: One paw at a time. And, as I quoted yesterday in a soon-to-be famous tweet: FALLING DOWN IS LIFE, GETTING UP IS LIVING…Chow.

The fossilized skull of a rat the size of a car has been found in Uruguay. It’s about 4 million years old and weighed about a ton, so big, in fact, that it probably spent most of it’s life submerged in water: a giant Hippo with a long tail and pointy nose.

They nicknamed it Mighty Mouse.

Apparently, the largest living rodent now is Capybaras at 60 kg fully grown…now, that’s a meal.

The squirrels are out in full force up in the Pincio. There’s nary a nut to be found now. They’re all squirreled away, if you will.

I sit and watch the dizzying creatures, mostly. Chasing them is fun, but it becomes tiresome after a while. Squirrel, tree, squirrel, tree, squirrel, tree.

So, I muse of other ways to use this rodent. Below is one of my favorites. It’s design reminds me somewhat of a machine Leonardo might have developed had he simply switched his obsession from flying a human

to flying a squirrel:

Then there’s the commercial amusement of providing the squirrel with a different take on an e-ticket Disney ride: